I finally broke down and bought a real HPS grow light after growing a big batch of really long stringy pea plants that produced no pea pods. And while it is a very big improvement over the T-8 grow lights with year old bulbs I had been using, I can't help noticing that my outdoor peas are now kicking ass on my indoor plants even though they were started later. Of course, the indoor garden does have a pretty big edge in this area from October through March, but when it warms up it looks like…

After having some bad luck with the second batch of trout, I decided to give yellow perch a try. This is going to be a much longer project because the fish are smaller (3-5") and don't grow as fast, but the perch are doing well after the first few weeks. They ate very little for the first couple days, but now they are feeding eagerly. Some of the smaller ones looked like they couldn't handle the pellet size, so I broke some of them up and that seems to be doing the trick. Wish me luck!